If we wish to get the full significance of this pas sage, as it might apply to any administrative activity in business, we may reread it, substituting for the words, march, army, corps, enemy, general-in-chief, maneuver, commanders, imperial, the words: sales, sales organization, salesmen, competitors, general manager, campaign, sales agents, corporation. With these substitutions, the passage reads like a modern auditor's report explaining the causes for the bank ruptcy of some business concern which he has ex amined.
8. Napoleon's methods not practicable for smaller men.—Men with but a fraction of his genius have be lieved themselves Napoleons in war and in business. They have believed that only thru one master mind could operations be successfully conducted, and have been equally sure that theirs was the master mind. They have not reckoned with the fact that many types of modern business demand for their conduct a labor which exceeds the physical and intellectual force of any one man; they call for administrative methods which involve the employment of numerous staff officers, experts who have the confidence of the gen eral manager.
In the larger concerns of today no simple form of organization could be applied, and even lesser con cerns are coming more and more to recognize the ad vantages of effective organization.
9. Improvised administration.—If collaboration in administrative planning, orders and supervision work s° well, one might well ask why Napoleon did not adopt it. Why, if the excellence of such methods is so
great, have they not been more widely adopted by business men in all parts of the world? The answer to the first question is that the scien tific method of preparation takes time. Neither in France nor in the countries opposing her did the mili tary situation in the Napoleonic era admit of the slow collaboration method of preparation.
Nor is the answer to the second question different. Men shrink. from the labor of reorganizing going con cerns. The business man recognizes that such a re organization involves a greater reliance upon the judgment of others. He is doubtful whether he can find men upon whom he can rely. If he trains them up in. his own business he knows only too well that staff officials who possess sufficient information and judgment to work out complicated problems in their departments, and who can collaborate with intelli gence and sympathy in building up general policies, are but slowly developed.
If military organization has gone further than busi ness, in systematic preparation for the emergencies which may call it into action, it is because it is easier to convince a nation of a public need than to impress upon successful men of business the value of new forms of carrying on their work.